Tuesday 31 January 2017

Light Chicken and Vegetable Soup and a pudding

Still on my quest to serve frugal but less calorific soups for lunch/evening I made this today:

2 medium chicken thighs, skin and fat removed and simmered until cooked (about 30 mins). Sieve (but keep) chicken water to remove any bones and count out ladlefuls into a clean saucepan. Top up to 12 ladles with water. When cold, strip and dice chicken meat and put to one side.

To this clean pan, add 1 bay leaf, 495g diced leeks, 285g diced carrots and simmer until half cooked. Then add 25g red split lentils. Simmer for another 10 minutes.

Add 1 diced green bell pepper (not chilli), 10g oat bran (to help thicken) and 2 chicken stock cubes. Simmer until everything is cooked through. Add diced chicken and remove bay leaf.

Add herbs of choice. You could use tarragon, parsley, sage, thyme etc. Blitz if desired and divide mixture between 6 bowls, which should be about 3 ladles each bowl. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve on its own for 146 calories per bowlful. Obviously it will be far more if you add bread, crackers, mini poppadoms etc. We had ours with a shared packet of mini poppadoms bringing our total to 221 calories each for lunch.

I know thigh is slightly more calorific than breast, but they also have more flavour. You can use what you wish.

I also made a fruit jelly:

1lb of plums were thawed and stewed without sugar then strained. Just under 3/4 pint of black cherry jelly was made and the plums stirred in. Sweetner was added to taste. Poured into 4 small dishes, two of these were used as a pudding to go with the soup:
Weird colour, nice taste and 140 calories per bowl!



3 comments:

  1. The soup sounds so good and tasty. I could just do with a bowlful to warm me up. It has gone very cold and damp here all of a sudden. X

    ReplyDelete
  2. Love the sound of the soup, I will definitely be giving that a go.

    ReplyDelete
  3. That would do me good too though I've lost weight so need to put some back on!

    ReplyDelete

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